Though once hailed as "America's Favorite Folksinger," Slim Whitman spent the bulk of his professional life enjoying far greater renown across Europe than at home. His legacy rests chiefly on a series of early-1950s chart successes such as "Love Song of the Waterfall," "Indian Love Call," and "Singing Hills," performances marked by his exceptional yodeling and a consistently mellow, romantic, and wholesome repertoire.
From childhood, the singer born Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr. displayed a deep fascination with music, teaching himself to yodel by studying recordings of Montana Slim and Jimmie Rodgers. At seventeen he wed fifteen-year-old Geraldine Crist, daughter of a preacher; the couple settled on a forty-acre farm south of Jacksonville, Florida, where Whitman took employment as a meat packer. An industrial mishap there cost him two fingers on his left hand, prompting a move to a Tampa shipyard. During World War II he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, acquiring guitar skills in the service. Upon discharge he resumed shipyard work and briefly played minor-league baseball for the Plant City Berries, remaining with the club until 1948. He then began performing on local Tampa radio outlets and assembled a backing group, the Variety Rhythm Boys.
A pivotal opportunity arrived when Colonel Tom Parker, then guiding Eddy Arnold's career, caught Whitman’s radio broadcasts on WFLA and secured an RCA contract by the close of 1948. Reluctantly adopting the stage name “Slim” at the label’s insistence, he issued his debut single, “I’m Casting My Lasso Towards the Sky,” which later served as his signature theme. National exposure followed with a summer 1949 appearance on the Mutual Network’s Smokey Mountain Hayride and a subsequent stint on The Louisiana Hayride, yet commercial traction remained elusive, forcing him to supplement his income as a part-time mail carrier.
Breakthrough came in the early 1950s with his interpretation of Bob Nolan’s “Love Song of the Waterfall,” which climbed to number ten on the country charts; its successor, “Indian Love Call,” elevated him to stardom by reaching number two country and crossing into the pop Top Ten. Both sides of the ensuing release, “Keep It a Secret” backed with “My Heart Is Broken in Three,” registered as substantial successes, and Whitman maintained a steady run of Top Ten entries through the middle of the decade. In 1955 the title song from the film Rose-Marie achieved widespread acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, after which he joined the Grand Ole Opry and, in 1956, became the first country artist to headline the London Palladium. A succession of British hits followed through the late 1950s and early 1960s, among them “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Unchain My Heart,” and “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen.”
Domestic progress, however, stalled after the 1954 single “Singing Hills,” yielding only two additional Top 40 placements over the next ten years. A resurgence occurred in 1965 when “More Than Yesterday” returned him to the country Top Ten; several modest country-chart entries ensued, including “Rainbows Are Back in Style” and “Happy Street” in 1968 and “Tomorrow Never Comes” in 1970. Minor successes continued into the early 1970s until Whitman withdrew from active recording in 1974.
He reentered the marketplace in 1979 through a television commercial promoting Suffolk Marketing’s compilation of his greatest hits. Bolstered by the advertisements, All My Best moved four million units and set a record as the highest-selling album marketed exclusively via television. The same company followed with Just for You in 1980 and The Best in 1982. Between 1980 and 1984 Whitman notched a brief sequence of minor hits, the strongest being the 1980 number-fifteen entry “When.” Late-decade television packages included Slim Whitman: Best Loved Favorites in 1989 and 20 Precious Memories in 1991. Recording activity tapered during the 1990s, though he sustained an active touring schedule, especially in Europe and Australia. His final album, Twilight on the Trail, appeared in 2010; he succumbed to heart failure three years later.
